Donald Trump Promises Flood-Ravaged Town to ‘Drain the Swamp’

KINSTON, NC — Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump delivered a stump speech about jobs, Obamacare and corruption to a crowd of several thousand cheering supporters on the tarmac at the local airport.

“We will drain the swamp” in Washignton, he promised the town, which had been flooded recently by rains during Hurricane Matthew.

The thrust of Trump’s speech — the third and most energetic in a day of heavy campaigning — focused on the economy, especially trade. “The jobs theft will end the day I start the presidency,” he pledged, promising to prevent jobs from leaving the state for Mexico, China, and other countries.

Trump also cited the recent spike on Obamacare premiums, promising to repeal and replace the law. He cited former President Bill Clinton, who called Obamacare the “craziest thing in the world” earlier this month. And he referred to several recent revelations in Wikileaks, describing Hillary Clinton as a criminal who should not have been allowed to run for president, prompting chants of “Lock her up!” and “Drain the swamp!”

Many people came to the rally with their families; small children perched on their parents’ shoulders, thrilled by the spectacle of Trump’s airplane landing on the airstrip and taxiing to a halt behind the stage.

“I’m as much anti-Hillary as I am a Trump supporter,” said Bill, a local insurance executive, as he held his daughter aloft. “The Supreme Court is the most important thing to me,” he added, predicting that Trump would “squeak out a win” in the Tar Heel state. “I don’t think you can rely on polls today.”

Dana Minges, a mother of one from nearby New Bern, came to the rally with family and friends. “We have to get out of the hole we’re in,” she told Breitbart News. “We have to get back to the core of the American people — we have to provide for the poor, but what about the people who go to jobs every day and work their asses off?”

Trump also talked up his performance in North Carolina, telling the audience that early voting was going well in the state and elsewhere.

He was interrupted by a protester at one point, and asked the heckler whether he had been paid $1,500 by the Hillary Clinton campaign — a reference to an activist recently exposed by James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas and Wikileaks.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. His new book, See No Evil: 19 Hard Truths the Left Can’t Handle, is available from Regnery through Amazon. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.